


Temperate Self-Governance

by speakmefair



Category: A Knight's Tale
Genre: Multi, Spying, ale, idiocy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-19
Updated: 2009-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-04 15:45:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speakmefair/pseuds/speakmefair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Geoff is a spy.  Will has a bright idea.  Wat listens to him.  And Adhemar wishes he had less idea of what's going on than he actually does.  No sons of Edward III were harmed in the making of this fic, although Chaucer may have wanted to...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Temperate Self-Governance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nonesane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nonesane/gifts).



**Temperate Self-Governance**

_Habit maketh no monke, ne wearing of guilt spurs maketh no knight.  
\- Thomas Usk _

"It's just a job," Geoff said, and give him credit, which Wat really didn't want to do, he looked as unhappy and irritated about the whole thing as Wat felt. "I don't mind, you know I don't. I like being in the middle of things. It's almost like being a herald for that." He added the last with a little, coaxing smile, but Wat couldn't shake the feeling that he was being managed, and, as a result, had the inalienable right not to be coaxed.

He wanted to say all sorts of things, like _why can't you tell me where you're going?_ and _if it's so routine and just a job, why does it matter so much?_, and _why you?_, but he didn't say any of those, because he knew that they would only lead to the most shameful question of all, which was - _why can't I come with you?_ \- and that, of course, would be giving in and giving up and accepting a whole lot of feelings that he wasn't quite sure he was up to coping with, even if Geoff seemed able to take them for granted, and honestly, none of this conversation was headed anywhere good, even in his own mind, so he scowled back to show his bad mood was unshakeable, and added, for good measure, a derisory "Huh."

"Oh, your eloquence," Geoff said, rolling his eyes. "As ever, I am overwhelmed and entirely conquered by your mastery of wit and –"

"Oh Christ Jesus, Geoff, stuff it," Wat said, but he was laughing despite himself, and Geoff's mouth curved into a real smile that was a long way from coaxing or mockery or anything but the small and private world they shared in his London rooms.

"_Really_," he murmured, straight into Wat's ear, and Wat jumped a little and shivered, despite himself, at the odd feeling of cool breath and Geoff's warm mouth and the way the word _felt_, brushing inside his head like a touch of a finger against his brain, all wrong and yet brilliantly right. "How would you like me to –"

Wat rolled him over, letting his weight press them both into the rather thin mattress, and bit Geoff's lower lip to make him shut up, at least temporarily.

"Mmff," Geoff said obligingly, because obviously complete silence was too much to ask for, and brought up a hand with the obvious intention of fending Wat off. Wat grabbed his wrist, and pinned it up above his head, and Geoff made a little startled noise that had nothing to do with any attempt at speech and not a lot to do with known consonants or vowels, either. It was his turn to shiver, now, before the long body under Wat's relaxed and stilled, an utterly familiar and still entirely satisfying reaction.

He'd taken a while to realise that that you needed to actually stop Geoff moving if you wanted his brain on the right track, but once he'd got that figured out, it had all been surprisingly easy from there. He got the impression sometimes that Geoff _liked_ the inevitability of that forced halt, that he sometimes pushed Wat until he provoked exactly that response in him.

Wat was always happy to oblige, but sometimes he couldn't help but wonder if that was part of being managed, too, that it was all part of Geoff's need to win even when he was losing, that somehow even when he came out on top, literally as well as figuratively, Geoff had the upper hand. It was all too bloody complicated for him to think about properly, and easier when, like now, he could dig his fingers just that little bit into the point under Geoff's hand where even his strong thumb went completely limp and stopped trying for any kind of purchase.

Easier when he knew all the places to touch that would get a response even bloody-minded Geoff couldn't control, easier to bite down over the little knot of bone where Geoff's collarbone met his shoulder, and lick salt from the hollow of his throat, to drive Geoff's too-clever mouth away from its quick words and into wordless demands for more.

Easier still for him to feign sleep, afterwards, and pretend not to notice that Geoff didn't wait for him to wake before leaving the bed, and packed his few necessary belongings in the grey light of dawn and a silence that was, for once, entirely unwelcome.

Easier to let himself fall into genuine sleep, after the door closed, and wake to the decision that he would take up Will's long-standing invitation to visit him at his new estates, and be damned to Geoff Chaucer and his ideas of how to say goodbye.

Easier not to wonder if he would ever know what it felt like to finally taste victory with Geoff, in bed or out of it, and tell himself it didn't matter one way or the other. He wasn't going to think about Geoff, and he wasn't going to worry about what he was really up to. He would spend the summer with Will, and pretend nothing had changed there, either, that it was still the old friendship, just as before, and had nothing to do with Jocelyn or knighthoods or anything inconvenient and _real_. He'd admire their son and their house and their world, and pretend it was just as important to him as the infuriating, quick-witted man who so blithely walked off into the unknown.

He was, he thought, as he dragged himself out of bed and into wakefulness with the aid of cold water, getting very good indeed at pretending.

*

No-one, unless they were incurably miserable and had terrible things wrong with their brain, or were Count Adhemar (and really, Wat thought, that would explain a lot if both those things were true of the man _all the time_) could object to Will being happy. He'd earned it, in spades and following a lot of fairly random opposition, and he hadn't exactly had the easiest of times after getting his title, winning the tournament and getting the girl.

The thing was, being a knight tended to mean being _responsible_ for stuff. Not like Sir Ector, who seemed to have given up everything except drinking and hitting people very hard and avoiding bathing as a kind of religious act. Mostly it meant waiting around on lands the Crown had been nice enough to grant you (and in Will's case, that you had no sodding idea what to do with) and waiting for someone to say 'right, let's go off and fight another random battle in France'. Which was fine, given as they were, well, _French_, and so were automatically up in line for a good hard fonging, but as it also meant if you didn't watch out, you spent a lot of time sitting around doing the waiting thing, it was a Greek gift.

He couldn't remember the exact Latin Chaucer had quoted, after Edward of Wales made him reintroduce himself to the third and brooding son of King Edward's multi-get, the too-old for his years John of Gaunt, but he knew it came out pretty much as 'These guys who are our enemies? You should kind of worry about them _more_ when they give you pretty things.'

And so that was why, if you were anti-thinking, and most knights were, the endless glory-seeking public display of the tournaments, Wat supposed, except no-one wanted to fight Will any more, because no-one really had a burning desire to end up flat on their back being publicly mocked by two squires, a female blacksmith, and a herald who then had the temerity to turn out to be someone else as much as the former Ulrich had been, and actually quite a well-known poet, and had the horrible tendency to go off and write things down, afterwards. Just in case anyone had missed the humiliation thing.

Apparently the mockery thing had been just about acceptable from Will, because – actually, Wat wasn't really sure, since it didn't fit in with the knightly code stuff the Prince had been babbling on about, but he put it down to 'Adhemar hates Will, Will hates Adhemar, oh, just let them get on with it'. So it wasn't so much considered mockery as a fair assessment of the proceedings, and at least Will had mentioned God in his little 'Welcome to the New World' encomium.

Be that as it may, it still meant no-one wanted to fight Will, and _everyone_ wanted to fight Adhemar, probably so they could get a chance at the gloating and mockery. From what Wat had heard from a frustrated Will, that part wasn't going so well, because Adhemar now had a very large thorn in his side, and was perfectly happy to take it out on anyone stupid enough to challenge him. He'd done well enough to even half-get back into people's good graces, because say what you liked about knightly codes and chivalry and honour, what the English _really_ loved was watching someone take on all comers and then twatting them repeatedly until they lay down and gave up. Preferably with just enough blood to be exciting but not potentially lethal, because someone dying right in front of you had a tendency to take all the fun out of the day.

So what with not being able to fight, not having been called up to France or the army yet, lands that a small child would have had a better idea about than a London-born brat who'd done nothing except trail round after Sir Ector since he was old enough to have his own thoughts, and constantly having to prove he was the epitome of all knightly virtues while not being able to do anything active about it, no-one would have blamed Will for a good, year long sulk.

Except, of course, he had Jocelyn, and Wat pretty much knew sulking was impossible with her around – at least for Will. Everyone else had no problem with it, but Will was happy as long as he had her, and she _wasn't_ completely ignorant of how lands and stuff worked, so she'd hired them a bailiff who knew what he was talking about, and it was all working out disgustingly well.

The thing was, when Will was happy? He _sang_, tunelessly and often repeatedly and, unless you were as besotted and tone-deaf as Jocelyn had to have been, that made no-one else happy at all. Especially when it seemed to involve things like pointing out over and over again that it was summer, and there was sun, which, thank you, Wat could see for himself without what sounded like a large demented bee explaining the fact every few minutes. He gritted his teeth, tried to enjoy the supposed peace and quiet and block Will out, and reminded himself for the hundredth time that day that this was all good and he was incredibly lucky to have a knight who still thought of him as a friend in his circle of acquaintances, and that this was supposed to be a break from London and a chance to really experience the good life and riches of the countryside.

Wat and nature didn't really mix – too many years going around piddling little towns with Sir Ector and sleeping out in it for the whole thing to be comfortable even now – but he got that if Will thought it was brilliant, he was at least going to have to pretend it was brilliant even when he was bored as all buggery, and he completely wasn't hoping for anything like a freak thunderstorm that would do something like burn down buildings and give them all something to do like fire-fighting and rebuilding and stuff they would probably be really useless at, but were a damn sight better than listening to Will's not-singing and admiring the new Thatcher heir for the fortieth time.

You really didn't get any prizes for guessing what Will and Jocelyn had mostly been doing with all that free time. Wat guessed that was one of the reasons they had the bailiff, because Will actually learning any of that landowner's stuff might have cut into his shagging time. Not that he'd have put it like that, but he figured even Geoff would have ended up, after three weeks of second-hand marital bliss, getting that crude and abandoning poetic fancy for straight-out statement of fact.

What it boiled down to was that Wat was setting _himself_ up for the year-long sulk in Will's place, which he supposed was the kind of thing a good squire should do, but given as he wasn't Will's squire any more (actually, he never really had been, but that just made his head hurt to try and work out, so he didn't), he figured he was owed it for himself. Even if he couldn't admit why, because no-one, _no-one_ with even a vague claim on sanity was going to go round shouting from the rooftops that the reason they were having a lousy summer was that they missed a lanky poet with no sense and an intermittent gambling problem.

And since he prided himself on having a nice clear grasp of both sanity and reality, Wat was staying quiet about the whole thing. Which was stupid, really, because Will might be happy and he might be besotted with his family and he might be a rotten singer, but he did actually tend to notice stuff like when other people weren't in quite the same blissful headspace as him. Wat supposed that made him a good friend, but it also made him really bloody annoying.

So when Will thumped down beside him under the tree and interrupted some perfectly good not-thinking time by poking Wat repeatedly in the nose with a blade of grass until he opened his eyes and glared up at the world's most shit-eating grin that meant Will, God save them all, had been _thinking_, and thought he had got something brilliantly right, Wat didn't even feel remotely like smiling back. He just thought –

_I am so fucking doomed -_

\- closed his eyes again, and waited for Will's latest unwanted Brilliant Thought to hit him over the head with its usual sledgehammer subtlety. Put Will's thought processes to work for Kate, she had once said in a fit of amused and slightly drunken honesty, and she'd get her work done in half the time and with a quarter of the effort.

"_You_," Will said, sounding far too pleased with himself, "miss Geoff."

Wat didn't even open his eyes. He just flicked the bowman's salute up with one lazy hand, and was vaguely disappointed when it didn't connect with some part of Will that hurt.

"No," he said, only slightly stretching the truth, because that wasn't really the whole problem. "Wrong answer."

"Huh." There was a grassy rustle, which meant that Will had settled himself down and wasn't going anywhere in the foreseeable future. "Funny. Jocelyn isn't often wrong."

And _that_ got Wat sitting up in a hurry, because Will and his so-called brilliance he could ignore as a lucky guess and generally fend off with insults and, if necessary, fists, but Will having ideas that came from female observation?

He was so very, very doomed.

"Jocelyn," he repeated feebly.

It was Will's turn to do the eyes-closed not-really-listening thing, apparently, which was irritating enough that Wat understood just what had provoked the grass-poking thing earlier.

"Will." It came out more as a squeak, which was completely not what he had been intending, because he had actually been aiming for low and menacing and very very off-putting, but seriously – "_Jocelyn_? Your _wife_ is commenting on my sex life?"

Except apparently no, that wasn't what she had been doing at all, because Will sat up in a hurry and nearly gave them both concussions, and said, sounding utterly horrified, "Wait, what, what? _Sex life_? You and Geoff have a –" and then lapsed into a sort of blank terrified silence while his face showed exactly where his brain had gone and how much he wished it hadn't.

"Oh my God," said Wat, and put his face in his hands.

"Fucking hell," said Will, and then – "Urgh, that, no, never mind, that wasn't –"

"Mercy and shut _up_," Wat said with miserable fervency.

"I'll...do that," Will said, still sounding as though someone had unexpectedly hit him over the head with a large rock, slightly slurred and very very concussed, and then – "Wanna go and get drunk on the new batch of ale?"

"_Yes,_" Wat said feelingly, and hoped that was the end of it.

*

It wasn't, of course. All that the ale accomplished was to send Will into a long stream of variations on the subject of "You and _Geoff_?" which was really starting to get insulting, and Wat was just getting drunk enough to point that out, when Will's brain finally caught up with the rest of him, and he moved on to – "So not as much missing him as _missing_ him, then," which was scary both for the fact he had changed his form of repetition and the fact he had caught up with himself enough to go back to his original point even _after_ an impressive amount of boozing.

"Yeah, _no_," Wat managed, wondering if he could still thump Will hard enough that he fell off his chair. It used to be a fairly easy process, but wearing that much armour on a regular basis gave you muscles, and he was pretty sure it would just add to the humiliation of this whole situation if he even tried that any more, so he kept his hands to himself. Unfortunately, he didn't have the same control over his tongue, and he mumbled with what he really wished could have been incoherence – "'M _worried_," which sent Will straight into the world of oh-God-I cannot-have-this-conversation all over again, and left Wat having to explain how no, he wasn't worried about _that_ (which fortunately Will understood, probably because of the attendant hand gestures, and his look of relief would have been insulting if Wat hadn't been feeling the same degree of said emotion) he was worried about _Geoff_, and then he shut up in a hurry, because he was fairly sure he shouldn't even have enough information to be worried, let alone admit to it, and he was _really_ sure about the world of pain that would be his if anyone found out he'd been talking about this to Will.

Except, world of pain aside and things he wasn't supposed to know about aside, Wat had a tendency, when he and Geoff were in London, to forget about just how they had got to know each other and just what Geoff had helped Will _with_, which meant that Will, glutted on marital bliss or not, tended to feel he had the right to hear every problem ever, mostly because he still felt a bit guilty about just how many of them he was possibly responsible for as a root cause.

Even if he was probably wishing right now he'd never stated thinking about problems or their causes.

"This about his spying?" Will said then, and holy shit, how did he do that? It was just wrong, that was what it was, wrong, wrong, _wrong_ that Will knew stuff without having to be told. Unless Geoff had told him, which was a whole other world of worry, because it meant Geoff had been talking to Will about it and not to Wat, and that was wrong too, and –

"I want my brain to stop," he moaned into his tankard.

"It's not exactly a secret," Will said sympathetically. "I mean, yeah, if he was a secret kind of spy, it would be, but he's more an emissary thingy, right?"

"Most of the time," Wat agreed, and it was amazing how fascinating the last inch of ale could be, if you made it swirl just _so_ and it caught the light and made those weirdly echoing liquid noises against the pewter, and if he looked up he was going to have to look at Will, so he was going to be fascinated, thank you very much.

"Most of the time but not now?" Will hazarded, and Wat sighed, because he wasn't going to give up, was he?

"Most of the time but I don't _know_ about right now," he said to the ale, with what was a combination of what even he could hear was self-pity and resentment, and which apparently exhausted Will's efforts at understanding and sympathy, because he just made a sound of sort-of agreement, and shut up.

There were a few moments of blissful silence, and then Will said happily –

"Right, so what you need is to go and help him."

Wat looked up at him, a little cross-eyed from all the ale-watching, and blinked. "I need to do _what_, now?"

"Well, I'd go, but there's only a month or so until harvest and I think I'm supposed to be there for that, and –"

"No," Wat said with a patience he was a very long way from feeling, "not why should _I_ go. Why should _anyone_ go? Why should there be –" he flailed his free hand around a bit, not entirely sure of what he wanted to say, but incredibly sure it needed to be said, " – going? Of any kind?"

"Because it's the right thing to do," Will said firmly, and Wat sighed.

He'd been right. Doomed. Utterly, hopelessly, God-help-him-because-no-one-else would, doomed. Once Will had decided something was 'the right thing to do' there was no stopping him and his horrible, horrible plans. Even when he was making them for other people.

Doomed.

*

It didn't help that while Will was really great at being enthusiastic about what should, or had, or must be done, he was really pretty crap at the 'and we'll do it like this' part. It was always hard not to remind him about what usually happened with his great ideas, which was that they got rescued from disaster by someone else (Wat's personal opinion was that when you had to get rescued by Edward of Wales from your own plans, you'd pretty much hit rock bottom on the forethought bit of it) and then lurched from one almost crash and-burn situation to another. The idea of setting off with nothing but Will's idea of how a man could change his destiny and behave like a true knight as a mental layout was, quite honestly, bloody terrifying.

The thought of trying to explain that, though, was even more so, which meant that, possibly unwisely, Wat didn't even bother to try. He just nodded a lot, and agreed as much as he could without choking, and had the private intention of just going back to London and holing up until he heard something one way or another, and then maybe, _maybe_ taking it from there. If he could. If there seemed any point to trying that didn't end up with everyone getting arrested this time instead of just Will, or at least _him_ getting arrested, which he was fairly sure he wanted to avoid at all costs.

Even higher on his list of things to avoid was somehow managing to cock up so badly that he got _Geoff_ arrested, because while he was pretty sure that could be got out of with the minimum of fuss, he was also very sure indeed he would be held to blame for it (which would be fair, because he would be) and never hear the end of it, either. Which would also be deserved, but incredibly annoying, and end up in several of those really pointless fights that they had mostly manage to stop, these days. Amazing how finding other ways of shutting Geoff up than a fist in the gob (which had never worked all that well anyhow, if Wat were honest) had proved to be so effective – but Wat was under no illusions about just how long they would _keep_ being effective, if Geoff found out that the reason he had spent time in a dungeon was because Will had suffered from a good idea and Wat had just blithely gone along with it.

There were no possible ways in which this could end well, even with Will being encouraging and Jocelyn offering to write to the Prince (which, God, _no_), and everyone generally thinking they knew best, when it wasn't them that had anything to lose. The only way out was if Wat disappeared as thoroughly as Geoff had and did nothing.

Which was what he had every intention of doing, right up until he broke his journey back to London at an inn in which he could now – something that never stopped being amazing – afford a room as opposed to a corner of a stable with hay that you just had to hope wasn't _too_ foul. It was all stupidly close to luxury, even with having to share a bed with two other people, and the evening had turned into one of those lazy summer ones where not even the dust seemed to want to do anything much, and he'd just settled himself on a bench outside with a decent drink and a feeling of equally lazy well-being, when it occurred to him that if it hadn't been for Geoff and his faked lineage documents and his unstoppable mouth, he'd be looking quite definitely at a worse pile of hay than usual, and he wouldn't be proud to name Sir William Thatcher among his friends, he'd be cursing Will and his good ideas for completely different reasons and from a world of real despair.

Which meant, _bugger it all_, that Will had not only been having one of his horrible Thoughts, he'd been right. Wat might not stand a hope in hell of finding Geoff, he certainly stood a really good chance of buggering it all up for everyone just by trying, but he owed it to someone – maybe Will, maybe God, maybe even Geoff, who would almost certainly make ingratitude a whole new thing even if Wat succeeded in finding him – to do just that and try.

For the first time, he understood what it was, apart from Will's own peculiar version of straight bloody-mindedness, that had made him ride into a tournament to be thumped around and _lose_. Sometimes, that was all you could do to prove yourself.

But damn, it was insane.

*

Even epiphanies didn't change simple facts. Wat still had to get to London before he could really think about what to do or the best way to go about it, and he still had to get himself some kind of idea of just what Geoff was up to. Which was, he knew, going to be harder than it sounded, because for someone who talked pretty much non-stop, and was sometimes threatened with bodily harm if he didn't shut up, Geoff wasn't particularly forthcoming when it came to actually _saying_ things. Wat would have loved it if he could have put that down to a natural reserve that made the poet an ideal emissary-spy-what the hell ever he was, but actually he thought it was because Geoff was just so bloody English that he didn't know the difference.

Either that, or he saved it all for his poetry. Wat had tried to read some of it once, got himself hopelessly lost and convinced that Geoff didn't write in English at all, no matter what he claimed, and given it all up as a bad job. Then he had listened to it being read aloud, and understood a bit better, if not, probably, what Geoff had meant him to understand. He had got it, _really_ got it, about why Geoff worked for the Prince's younger brother. He had worked out why Geoff was willing to do stuff for John of Gaunt that he really shouldn't have been thinking about, and why he had been prepared to agree to what the Crown in general tended to want from him – and why he had been trying to disappear into the life of a herald for Ulrich von Lichtenstein, rather than that of Chaucer the writer.

Because Geoff had written about love - _real_ love, like Will's for Jocelyn, and real grief, and all the stupid ways someone's mind tried to convince them those things weren't bigger than a single person could cope with – and John of Gaunt had understood what he was saying, and been _grateful_, not insulted, that Geoff had said them. You couldn't take that kind of weird bond away from people, even if the bond didn't make any sense and even if neither of them were all that keen on having it. He was pretty sure Geoff wasn't that fond of Gaunt, and couldn't think of any reason why Gaunt should have given a damn one way or the other about whether Geoff lived or died, but somehow they mattered to each other, and all because of Geoff and his words.

So yeah, maybe Geoff was crap at saying things, but his whole life was spent proving he was bloody good at _writing_ them, and Wat was dismally sure that if nothing else, he would have written something down that had a clue in it. Even if it was just a note about what to do with his empty Aldgate rooms while he was away, because no-one had been able to get it through his thick head that it was going to need three scribes and probably a translator for the poor landlord to find out what the instructions were.

Right now, Wat was ready to settle for a tailor's bill - _anything_, so that he could call it a starting point and work out from there where Geoff's head had been when he wrote it. And wasn't it scary, wasn't it bloody stand-still stop-breathing _terrifying_, that he knew Geoff well enough now that he could even think this was a possibility?

He didn't want to think about that. He didn't want to think about just how much trouble he was storing up for himself with what he was going to do – or try to do. He didn't want to think about love or poetry or anything except getting off his arse and finally doing something that made _him_ feel better.

Which was probably why he didn't just thump Adhemar for old times' sake when he met him outside the house in Aldgate, and just stared at him instead, trying to fit his appearance into any sort of reality, be it mental or actual.

"What the – " he started, and stopped, feeling like the village idiot.

"Oh no," said Adhemar. "Oh please no. I have done _nothing_ in my life that could possibly be so wrong as to deserve _you_ appearing in it again. Being sent like an errand boy to get Chaucer is bad enough, but this is absolutely _it_. The Prince can take his orders and stuff them up his –"

"Wait, the Prince gave you orders about _Geoff_ -!" Wat started, and then forgot what he was going to say to finish up with, as he realised he had made the probably unforgivable mistake of touching Adhemar of Anjou.

Well. Not so much _touching_, really, as grabbing his shoulder, which would explain why his wrist had just been hit with the side of Adhemar's gloved hand hard enough to make him think it was broken.

"_Don't_ do that," said Adhemar, almost lazily, his tone belying the way his eyes were practically alight with temper. "And what I'm doing here is none of your business."

Which was technically true, but very untrue as well, and – Wat gave up and relied on the old fallback that was what he, Will, Roland and Geoff had all once had in common. He lied through his back teeth.

"Yeah it is, actually, 'cause Gaunt sent _me_," he retorted, and had the satisfaction of watching Adhemar close his eyes with an expression of pure misery.

"You're joking. Please tell me this is a horrible joke at my expense due to old grudges and you're making it up."

"Nope," Wat said smugly, even though he _was_, because at least Adhemar had got the reasons wrong, which called for a good round of absolute denial. "Sorry." Which really _was_ a lie, and he didn't even bother to hide it.

"So am I," said Adhemar grimly, which was just weird, because Wat had come to think of the man of embodying every single one of the Seven Deadly Sins, and yet here he was telling the truth while Wat was lying about everything under the sun, and then, in what sounded like a moment of shared confidence but Wat guessed was just the venting of someone at the end of their not-very-good patience – "You know, for brothers? You'd think they could communicate just once in a while..."

Wat, who was currently being very glad indeed that apparently they didn't, decided not to say anything at all to that, on the grounds that first of all, it was very unlikely Adhemar wanted to hear it, and secondly, he was deep enough into the lying thing that it was probably a good idea if he started to cut down on all the different strands of untruths he would have to maintain right now. He gave a small shrug, and waited, because however little he might like the thought, the truth was that Adhemar was, right then, his best chance at finding anything out at all, and far, far better than some hoped-for tailor's bill or imaginary scribbled instruction to a landlord.

Unfortunately, smugness, never far from his mind when it came to Adhemar, set in, and he found himself grinning, just enough that he knew he would be thoroughly irritating. "So how come Count Adhemar's running errands for the Prince of Wales, then?" he asked mockingly, and Adhemar visibly gritted his teeth, before making an equally visible effort to reply in a way that didn't involve starting a fight.

"Because he rather likes remaining Count Adhemar," he said in impressively even tones, and Wat, unwillingly, had to admire him for that. It couldn't be much fun, knowing that no matter what you did, you were going to be known as the knight who wouldn't fight the Black Prince and had been beaten by a newly-knighted peasant. He guessed Adhemar had been doing a lot more pride-swallowing recently than his tournament record suggested – not that he felt in the least bit bad about it, because the man deserved that and worse, but still. You had to have a bit of steel in you to keep going through that just to hang on to your title.

"Yeah," he muttered. "Makes sense." He got a bit of the old resentment back, a comforting little spark to see him through whatever this was going to be, and added, "'Course, that's what _would_ matter to someone like you..."

"Yes it is," Adhemar said in the same even tones. "So what's your excuse? Because somehow I can't believe even Gaunt wants _you_ on his string."

"Er," said Wat, hopelessly caught up in his own wild inventions, and settled on a half-truth as the easiest way out. Seemed like once you started lying, the only way forward was seeing just how much honesty you could get away with. "Cause I know Geoff and maybe he thought I was an easy person to get hold of him?"

Adhemar nodded in gloomy acceptance. "Wonderful," he muttered. "I suppose that means I have to let you tag along with me to Dover, then."

Half of Wat was cheering at the knowledge that he'd been right, and here was some information, and he actually stood a chance of finding Geoff even if it was all nothing to worry about and really a giant waste of time, and the rest of him was just caught up in –

_Oh_ God, _I have to go to Dover with _Adhemar.

While pretending, as well, that he had a better knowledge of John of Gaunt than having seen him from a distance. Twice, okay, he had seen him from a distance twice, but he really didn't think that was going to even half-way cover it.

He decided, for the sake of his sanity, that he just blamed Will. Since, judging from the impressive string of muttered curses coming from Adhemar, he was busy blaming everyone else, it seemed only fair that Will got his share of accusation in the whole mess.

*

Getting to Dover was a total nightmare. Not that Wat had expected much else, but Adhemar had a complete disregard for the capabilities of anyone's horse but his own, and looked upon nightfall as a personal affront, especially when there wasn't anywhere to stop that immediately attended to his every whim. By the end of the first evening's search for somewhere the bloody man considered suitable, Wat found himself wishing that all there was available were rotting haystacks, and be damned to his own discomfort.

Of course, it being Adhemar, he got what he wanted, even if by that time it couldn't even reasonably be called nightfall and was well on its way to being 'middle of the night'. Amazing what a few well-placed threats backed up with coinage could do, even if Wat was fairly sure it was only the latter that had saved them from the hypothetical haystacks.

There was then the argument that he really should have expected, and which was causing the landlord some very badly-disguised glee, about just why Wat was not getting any share of the bed or in fact the room, and was going to be sleeping in the communal room on a pallet, thank you very much. Since arguing too much would have led to the implication that he _wanted_ to share a bed or a room with Adhemar, Wat didn't really put up that much of a fight. Even if he did think the man was an over-entitled ponce for making all that fuss.

It seemed as though that small surrender had just confirmed Adhemar in his conviction that his superior behaviour was perfectly well-merited, however, as he then decided it was all Wat's fault he had set out for Dover without his squire, and someone needed to fill the vacancy. Which, _no_, and Wat wasted no time in making that absolutely clear.

It was some consolation to realise, come the morning, that Adhemar had _definitely_ spent a worse night than he had, room and bed all to himself or not. Wat rather evilly hoped it had taken him hours to get his riding boots off. Judging from the way he kept cricking his neck and wincing, it was fairly certain that actually, he hadn't bothered, and had got little to no comfort from the bed at all as a result. Choosing discretion, Wat tried not to laugh. Not openly, anyhow. The landlord was causing enough problems with his failures in that respect already.

He did feel a little guilty, though, when they set off, and Adhemar winced for what must have been the thousandth time since he'd stumbled downstairs, and then held up a hand and said very tiredly, "Just – don't," which made Wat want to wince a little, too, because he might hate Adhemar with the passion of a thousand fiery suns, but he was also his only link to finding Geoff, and also because, no matter how hard Wat sometimes tried, he was not a total bastard and he knew from experience just how much having your back hurt could completely fuck your life up.

It wasn't as though Wat felt any desire to help the man in any way, bar making sure he didn't actually fall off his horse or something before they got to Dover, but he was beginning to realise that when people said 'Don't mock the afflicted', they didn't mean 'because it's a bad, unworthy thing to do', even though it really was, they meant 'because you will feel like a total shit for doing it'. All right, _Adhemar_ probably wouldn't have felt even a slight niggle of what he laughably called his conscience if that had been Wat, and he would most likely have mocked him all the rest of the way to Dover, but that, Wat thought with a fair amount of smugness, was what made him a better person than Adhemar, and that was definitely worth knowing.

Between smugness and not-mocking and relief that Adhemar was setting a more comfortable pace, it was most of the morning before Wat went back to the horrible worry that had gone a long way from nebulous concern and straight into something approaching fear, because sniping aside, the fact that Adhemar had set straight off for Dover and not bothered with even getting his squire was proof positive that there really was something to be concerned about, Will's attempts at explaining the right thing to do aside.

By the time they stopped for the second evening, Wat was as bad-tempered as Adhemar, and with a lot less leeway being given to him than he had been so magnanimously granting the suffering knight.

"For God's sake," Adhemar said in disgust, when they'd sorted out the bed situation yet again, and this time agreed that, like it or not, Adhemar was going to pay the pot-boy to help him with his damn boots, because Wat still wasn't going to no matter how much the man complained, "get drunk or something. Or a wench, Christ forgive her bad taste, there's got to be someone blind and desperate enough for the money out there."

Wat was too tired and fed up to do anymore than sneer at both suggestions, but after an hour spent tying himself into knots about what Prince Edward could want with Geoff, and why Adhemar, and what he was going to do when Adhemar found out about his lying, getting drunk seemed like the only possible solution to any of it.

It probably explained why, three hours later, he thought it was a good idea to go and wake Adhemar up and demand to know exactly why it was so bloody important the Prince get hold of Geoff, and whether he was in danger, and whether he should be as worried as he was, and a whole lot of other things that had Adhemar, who had woken up with all the charm of a sleep-deprived weasel, glaring at him in speechless annoyance and not in the least inclined to enlightenment.

"I know it's a novel concept for you," he said at last, "but some of us have this funny habit of doing what we're told. And right now I'm telling you that if you value your continued existence, you need to _get out of my room_."

"It's not," Wat said, poking him in the chest with what he was fairly certain was one finger, but might well have been two, "_your_ room. It's a room you _paid_ for."

"Right, that's _it_," said Adhemar furiously, and was somehow out of his bed, on his feet, and propelling Wat towards the door at a speed really not suited to his unsteady feet. "Go and sleep it off, and God forgive me for ever having suggested you go near alcohol."

The door shut in Wat's face before he could think of a suitably witty reply, and the scraping sounds that followed suggested that Adhemar had jammed something heavy up against it to prevent any chance of re-entry.

Wat decided to save being amused at that for a time when he could appreciate amusement better, sat down with his back to the adjacent wall, and went heavily and uncomfortably to sleep.

*

It was Adhemar's turn to not-quite laugh most of the next day, which in his case involved a lot of very knowing looks interspersed with almost-smirks that had Wat wanting to punch him into the middle of next week, and only holding onto his restraint by the thought of just what could happen right now if he tried it. He suspected his own head might fall off in the attempt, apart from anything else, and he was settling in for a long hard wallow in his well-earned misery, when Adhemar reined in and said very quietly and while looking straight ahead at the road before them, which was narrow and dusty, and lined with cow-parsley and really not deserving of that much attention, as far as Wat could tell -

"Right, you need to be aware that I am only ever going to say this to you here and now, and I am banking on the fact that you feel too deservedly horrible to really take any of it in, but as far as I know, you haven't got anything to worry about regarding that damned Chaucer. I'm just prepared to go to any lengths to stop the way people look at me these days, and if that means jumping every time the Prince says 'frog', then so be it. It's also possible that I may have been too wrapped up in all the ways I need to redeem myself to think about the fact I actually need to tell my squire I'm going somewhere if I want him to attend me. Possible. Not a fact, just a possibility."

Wat looked at the cow-parsley, and the dust, and the odd rough patch between his horse's ears, and finally said, not altogether steadily, "Thanks."

"You're entirely unwelcome," Adhemar said, "and don't for a minute think that this means I like you."

Which at least was lovely, familiar, _safe_ ground, and Wat responded, almost happily, "Thank you, Jesus Christ and all his saints. And the Holy Virgin. And I promise I am never gonna miss another Sunday on my knees."

Adhemar actually had the gall to look insulted by that, and Wat stared at him. "_What_? I don't like you, either!"

"Yes," Adhemar said very dryly. "I think you've made that rather graphically clear, but thank you _so much_ for explaining it to me in small words. I would have been so confused, otherwise."

The rest of the journey was spent in complete silence, apart from some rather spectacular coughing fits as the summer dust got almost unmanageable. It seemed days of sunshine did bugger all for travel routes.

*

It was a decided anti-climax, when they got to Dover, to find that Geoff was exactly where, if anyone had bothered to check, he was supposed to be, in rented rooms and going through days of interminable meetings with someone from France. When he finally escaped from his latest attempts at sorting out whatever it was he had been told to sort out, and found his very dusty, foul-tempered and extremely unwelcome guests waiting for him downstairs, the expression on his face was almost worth the whole Adhemar-ridden journey.

"Right," he said a bit blankly, and then – "I'm terribly sorry, no, not _right_, this is about as far from right as I can possibly imagine, what the _hell_?"

Adhemar looked up from where he was futilely brushing at his clothing, and gestured rather impatiently at Wat. "Oh, _do_ feel free to explain," he said. "Jesus, anyone would think I'd bathed in the stuff…"

"Er, he's got a message from the Prince," Wat said rather feebly, which didn't lessen Geoff's expression of incredulity at all.

"So you thought you'd help him bring it?" he asked, his voice starting to shoot up to match his already raised eyebrows.

"No, he's got a message from Gaunt," Adhemar, the double-dyed bastard, interjected helpfully. "We just happened to coincide."

"Really," Geoff said flatly. Wat stared at the floor. Adhemar looked up, faintly puzzled.

"It is hardly our fault you were not where you were supposed to be," he said with irritable formality, and Wat had a moment's delighted and hysterical amusement at the fact Adhemar had been forced to put them both together in the same sentence, before Geoff's expression caught up with him, and he realized his lie had been seen straight through by the would-be master of deception.

_Oh, shit._

"And Gaunt's message?" he asked Wat pleasantly, his smile promising murder.

"Er….I think it's private," Wat said, floundering, caught-out, and thinking longingly of just how much pain he was going to cause Will if he ever got out of this.

"You amaze me," Geoff said in the same nice tones, and gestured to the stairs. "Please, feel free to share it with me in said privacy." He looked at Adhemar, then, and said, his mouth twitching, "Er, feel free to order as much hot water as you require."

"Thank you," Adhemar said, too dust-ridden and irritable to spot the sarcasm. Geoff tilted his head a little, looking at Wat with a kind of bland curiosity that was somehow more terrifying than every rat-nibbling worry he'd had over the last few days, and Wat legged it up the stairs before Geoff could insist the message be given to him right the hell now.

He had been right. Utterly, totally doomed.

*

"There isn't a message, is there?" Geoff said, closing the door, and Wat shook his head with a wince. "Seriously, that was the best you could come up with? Didn't it occur to you that of _all people_, John of Gaunt knows exactly where I am and what I'm doing?"

"Yeah, but _I didn't_!" Wat burst out, and Geoff paused, his mouth a little open as he stopped himself from saying whatever had been coming next, and let out a little breath of surprise.

"I'm…missing the meaning of that, aren't I?" he said at last, frowning, but the look of murderous pleasantry had gone from his face entirely.

"Yeah," Wat said. "Yeah, you do that a lot. You talk all the time, Geoff, but you never say anything worth a damn except when I push you. I'm not saying I need you to tell me everything, or even half everything, but just – oh, yeah, I'm going to Dover, I'll be gone for a while – that would have been good, you know? That would have _meant_ something, and I wouldn't have had to have the world's worst conversation _ever_ with Will, and I wouldn't have been so worried that even bloody _Adhemar_ picked up on it, so yeah, I would say you're missing a _lot_!"

Geoff's mouth had stayed open during his diatribe, which really wasn't that attractive a look on him, and he very slowly leant against the door, his eyes wide.

"Will?" he said at last, rather faintly.

"Yes," Wat said irritably.

"I mean, I can see – I _saw_ \- Adhemar, but what the hell has _Will_ -"

"There was ale," Wat said, feeling the least Geoff deserved was a little obscurity of his own in return for the hell of the past few days.

"Ah."

"And Jocelyn."

"Right."

"And there might have been some conclusions jumped to," Wat said, starting to feel positively gleeful. "By me."

"Oh God," said Geoff, and ran a hand over his face.

"I think he's fine with it now, though."

"Oh _God_," Geoff repeated, and then lowered his hand with an expression of pure horror on his face. "Please tell me Adhemar doesn't –"

"Oh hell no," Wat said quickly, because even paying Geoff back for the interminable journey to Dover wasn't worth him thinking he could be that stupid. "No, he just got – caught up in things. And he's got a bad back 'cause of sleeping in his boots."

"Oh." Geoff was back to monosyllables again, looking both relieved and still horrified. Wat guessed that, irritation aside, he could possibly have done a better job of explaining things, or even found a similar if less all-at-once way that _hadn't_ made Geoff almost speechless with horror. On the other hand, it was good to know that he was currently three for three on getting people to do that, and probably had a career in the making, if anyone had any use for it. "So there really _is_ a message from the Prince?"

"Far as I know, yeah." Wat felt he had the right to be aggrieved at that, because all that explaining and all he got back was worry about _Adhemar's_ message?

"Right," Geoff said a bit vaguely. "Good. Um…and you came here because you were worried?"

"_Yes_," Wat said, starting to feel a bit angry, because Geoff was supposed be clever, after all, and hadn't he just _said_ all that, at some length? But Geoff just nodded, slowly and thoughtfully, and then smiled for the first time since his half-twitched look of amusement at the dust-covered Adhemar, who could be heard cursing someone downstairs for the fact he had been brought what was apparently quite excruciatingly cold water in a small cup, rather than his needed basin of hot.

"And you lied about having a message from Gaunt. Just so you could go with Adhemar, of all people, to Dover. To find me."

Wat closed his eyes in relief, and let out what felt like the first proper breath he'd taken since he had got to London. "Yeah," he agreed. "It seemed like the right thing to do."

"I think…it was," Geoff agreed. "Hell of a way to get things through to me, though. Have you any idea what could have –"

"_Yes_," Wat said, in real exasperation, "being as I've thought about nothing else for I don't know how long. Yes, I know, yes, it was probably stupid, yes, it could have been dangerous, and _yes_, that's all true for you as well, and we're right back to where we started with you being a stupid twat who needs to _tell me things_."

Geoff snorted. "And if I don't?" he said, half-laughing.

Wat glared at him, as much as he was able, and took two steps forward so that he was pinning Geoff against the door far more than the man was actually leaning against it. "Pain," he said.

"I see," Geoff said, all the old infuriating calmness back to the fore, living proof of why threats were useless. "Lots of pain, I remember…"

"Oh, you have _no_ idea," Wat said, and kissed him.

He was never sure, later, whether it was more satisfying to have got the last word, to have heard the hard thump with which Geoff's head hit the wood, or to know, once and for all, what it felt like to have Geoff Chaucer finally, finally, give in and accept that someone else was _bloody well right_.

At the time, though, all that mattered was the kiss.

It tasted, finally, like victory.

_"Full wise is he that can him selven knowe."_

-Geoffrey Chaucer

FIN

**Author's Note:**

> This was my original assignment, and my heart leapt for joy when I received it. Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for making this a gift to me to write, and I only hope I've given even a fraction of that pleasure back.


End file.
